


The Top of the Far Hill

by longnoideatime



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 20:44:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4451708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longnoideatime/pseuds/longnoideatime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short one shot. I was going for old school fairytale in tone. Small village, single mother, accusations of witchhood. Hilarity ensues! (Kidding. Not a funny story.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Top of the Far Hill

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning: has nothing to do with any introduced canon storyline, I just like the world. As always, comments, critiques, feedback, kudos, quips, witticisms, etc appreciated.

There was a woman who lived at the top of the far hill, having appeared suddenly and mysteriously, one the citizens of the tiny village at the bottom of the hill whispered about. "Maleficar," they said. "Witch." She was neither, just not what they wanted her to be, beautiful and husbandless with two small children. Where she got the money to support them all no one knew, and they spat the words "Sneak thief, whore." Their words didn't touch her, and this inspired them to greater heights of cruelty, the women spitting in the street where she walked, the men speaking their lewdnesses louder, spewing more vulgar forms of vitriol as they pulled at her clothes, throwing pebbles at the back of her legs.

One of the village women, Clara, a thin toothpick of a woman whose face was chapped red from harsh winds, and spitefully pinched from one too many hardships unwillingly endured, had a husband, Thomas; a farmer who was one of the few men too kind to sit outside the woman's house in the early morning hours, singing crude songs while her figure could be seen within, shushing her children as they tried to sleep. She thought that Thomas's kindness, his willingness to trade with the woman, meant he was in love with her, and as she watched him with her over the years, her conviction grew, until it became something of an obsession, turning everything to acid in her mouth.

She called the Templars, intending to teach the treacherous harlot a lesson, as the Templar leader in the area was said to like his women pretty and unwilling, but saw the woman standing stoically outside of her hut instead, holding back her boy as they took the younger daughter away. The woman didn't cry, strands of her long dark hair whipping about her face and making her look even more like a witch, her expression almost callously indifferent despite the wailing boy she restrained with surprising strength. Clara, hidden in the bushes at the base of the hill, stepped on a stick, and saw the woman's eyes laser down onto her as she flushed guiltily, even as she mustered a look of unadulterated bitter defiance when she stared back. In the unknowable depths of the dark eyes that looked down on her was the knowledge of what she had done, and something that made her want to shrink in terror, though this was her victory.

News came that the Templars who had absconded with the woman's daughter were found dead, and the girl was missing. Clara opened her mouth to accuse the dark haired devil, standing with such poise it seemed impossible for Thomas to not love her, but something carefully hidden within those twin pools of black stopped her, and she sat back.

It was on a night that the husband had gone to the next town over to trade that Evangeline set fire to the village woman's house, the exits carefully blocked to prevent any possibility of escape. Henry and Isolde waited at the gate, cloaked as she was, and she knelt briefly to kiss the tops of their heads before taking their hands and disappearing into the blackest parts of the night.

 


End file.
